The Wrong Wife - Carolyn McSparren Mills & Boon Vintage Superromance

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filled the sink, dropped in the ice cubes and swished them around before she began to inspect the lace.

      The piece was good-sized—several yards. She fingered it to find the spots of smeared blood so that she could immerse only that area and as little of the rest as possible. No sense wetting the whole thing. It would weigh a ton and possibly damage the fragile stitches.

      Aha. She found the first spot. Amazing that such a little thing as a pinprick could make such a mess. “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” she said idly, realizing as she said it that one of her starving-actor friends said quoting from Macbeth was bad luck.

      She snapped on the light over the sink and glanced down at the lace across her hands.

      She froze. A sound she couldn’t begin to recognize rose in her throat.

      She hadn’t bled that much.

      The lace in her hands was drenched, dripping with gore, and her hands were covered in bright fresh blood, so thick she felt as though she could dye the water scarlet.

      “No!” She dropped the lace, turned, shoulders hunched, head bowed.

      She felt her gorge rise and fought the urge to vomit. “No.” She nearly yelled the word. She felt the world spin, her vision blur.

      After what seemed a lifetime, but was probably no more than a few seconds, she managed to force herself under control. She took a deep breath and turned back to the drainboard.

      She was nearly afraid to look at her hands.

      Her hands were dry and clean. She picked up the lace. Maybe eight or nine dots of brownish dried blood stained it. She stared at it, frowning, puzzled.

      Then she shook her head. “Trick of the light, obviously. Sunset through the window.”

      She realized she was speaking aloud. The sound of her own voice in the silent room was momentarily comforting. “Stupid. Ought to get my eyes examined.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose where her half glasses sat during the day. “It’s Ben’s fault. He’s the one that fell out of the tree, and here I am with the concussion and hallucinations.”

      She slipped the bloodstained portion of the lace into the ice water, sluiced it around gently for a minute, then left it immersed. As she dried her hands, she almost expected to see blood on the towel. Ridiculous.

      She walked over to the armoire in the corner that held the stereo and television. She didn’t want to listen to the news. It was always bad. She’d had enough mayhem for a lifetime.

      She flipped through the meager stack of CDs. Vivaldi? Mozart? Too orderly. Too optimistic. She needed angst. She found an old version of the Kindertotenlieder. Peachy. Enough angst there for a whole hundred years’ worth of the Black Plague.

      But triumphant at the end.

      That didn’t happen in real life. In real life you muddled along and hoped to survive with your brain and your body intact and without causing too much damage.

      In her case, it was a little late for that already.

      CHAPTER THREE

      WHILE HER TV DINNER microwaved, Annabelle curled into a tight little ball in the yellow club chair beside the empty fireplace. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, and then ran her fingers down her face. When she touched her cheeks she realized they were wet with perspiration and her fingertips were actually shaking.

      What had happened with the lace? She could tell herself it was a trick of the light, but she knew better.

      Jonas once told her that Governor Huey Long of Louisiana carried around a mock certificate of release from the Louisiana state mental institution as proof that he was sane. She had often wished she had a certificate like that so she could point to it and say to herself, “See. You are not a nutcase.”

      In a pinch, she could call on a couple of excellent psychotherapists to certify she wasn’t any crazier than so-called healthy people.

      Okay, so she hated cocktail parties and meeting new people and speaking in public.

      But hallucinations? Never, not in all her years. Not even when the nightmares had still been coming at least once or twice a week.

      And she hadn’t had the nightmares for years.

      Until she’d come back to Memphis to work for the wife of the man who had failed to defend her father successfully. But they’d been divorced for years. Hal Jackson had disappeared years ago just as her own father had disappeared when he’d been released from prison.

      Her New York roommate, Vickie, had begged her not to leave New York. Annabelle managed to keep paying her half of the rent so that Vickie didn’t have to sublet. She needed her place to come back to when she left Memphis. Together she and Vickie had done a bunch of work decorating the SoHo loft, and they’d never be able to find another one now at anything like a reasonable rate.

      But family was family. That was all that mattered, really. Grandmere needed Annabelle because there was no one else.

      When Annabelle had had no one else, her grandmother hadn’t hesitated to take her in.

      She’d fed and clothed Annabelle, sent her to the best schools, even tried from time to time to act like a regular grandmother. It wasn’t her fault that she’d failed so miserably. She was a dragon by nature, and the disastrous circumstances under which she’d acquired Annabelle had destroyed the way of life she cherished, turned the woman into a bitter recluse.

      It didn’t even matter that she’d made Annabelle pay psychologically over the years. Grandmere had done the best she could. Now it was Annabelle’s turn. That was the way families worked.

      She couldn’t manage to look after Grandmere from eighteen hundred miles away any longer, to turn over her care to unknown women who came and went almost as often as they changed Grandmere’s antique linen sheets.

      Six months wasn’t much to give back for all those years and all those school bills. Dr. Renfro said his best guess was that Grandmere probably had less than six months left.

      Annabelle dreaded losing the old woman. They had always had a love-hate relationship, but when Grandmere died, the last tiny root that tethered her to home would be gone. She’d be forever adrift.

      Right. The old lady would outlive them all if will was any criterion.

      The microwave dinged. Annabelle turned off the CD and flipped on the television. The news was over. Now she at least had the company of human voices and laugh tracks.

      She put her dinner on a tray, took it back to the club chair and ate with little attention to the television sitcom.

      Her finger, the one that she’d jabbed with the dressmaker’s pin, throbbed. She’d doctored it with antibiotic ointment and covered it with a bandage, but it still hurt. Drat Ben anyway! The thought of him set other nerves throbbing.

      She glanced over at the lace, now spread carefully on a sheet of white cardboard on her worktable. At least she didn’t see the thing dripping with blood any longer.

      After dinner she had to drive over to check on Grandmere, to be certain the current caregiver hadn’t given up in disgust as so many of the others had, or that Grandmere hadn’t lobbed a silver tray at her head and brained the poor woman.

      Amazing how strong Grandmere could be when she was angry. Lying in that big old bed she looked no larger than a kitten.

      Annabelle picked up her tray and took it into the kitchen. Then she swung her black sweater over her shoulders. The April nights still got chilly. As she started for the stairs the telephone shrilled.

      She yipped. Silly to be so jumpy at sudden sounds. She grabbed the phone and said, “Yes, hello,” and knew she sounded crabby.

      “Uh, Annabelle?” A male voice. “It’s Ben, Ben Jackson.”

      “Yes,

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